Interview: Natalie Portman

Share.

Ms. Portman discusses her role in Garden State.

By Jeff Otto

At 23, Natalie Portman has been a respected actress since she first turned heads with one of the most daring child actor performances ever seen in Jean Reno's Leon (The Professional to American audiences). She seemed to portray a wisdom beyond her years, going on to play pivotal parts in Michael Mann's Heat and Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls. While the film-aware already knew her as one of the most exciting young talents in years, it was the casting as Queen Amidala that made Portman a worldwide superstar.

While the Star Wars prequels have been met with mixed reactions, Portman's career is going strong. She has one final Star Wars film that is slated for release next May, and in the meantime she can be seen in Mike Nichols' Closer in December and in the film we are actually here to talk about, Garden State, which opens in limited fashion on the 30th of July.

Garden State gives Portman the chance to let it all hang out and then some, playing the quirky but lovable compulsive liar Sam. She meets Zach Braff's character, Large, in a doctor's waiting room and the two find an instant connection. Braff also wrote and directed the film, which has been one of the year's buzz films since receiving a standing ovation earlier in the year at the Sundance Film Festival.

IGN recently had a brief chat with Portman at LA's Four Seasons as she made the rounds to promote Garden State.

The character of Sam is certainly not one for a shy actress. "I think the challenge is just to be as free as possible, because I can get pretty reserved and inhibited and she's not that girl at all. But I think it's sort of an adult thing. When you're a kid, you sort of aren't even aware that other people are watching you or judging you or anything, or you don't really care, you're not paying attention. Then as you get older, you sort of realize it more and you get more a view of how people look at you."

Natalie Portman in Garden State

Although Portman may now be more reserved and "adult" in her own life, she says that she could certainly appreciate her character's crazy free spirit. "Well, I definitely have a sort of silly, kooky side to myself, and you always take a part of yourself for the character, but obviously, I mean, it's a character. She's a girl working a sort of boring job in New Jersey, coming up against a disease that she's had since she was little and the disappointment of that and what it did to her hopes and, you know, she's obviously had a very different life experience than I do."

The set of Garden State was a far cry from the effects-driven, blue screen-laden sets of Lucas' Star Wars films. "It definitely brings you down to the essential elements. I mean, there aren't explosions or battles or special effects. It's really about the characters and the story and that's it, and their relationships. So yeah, it definitely makes it more concentrated, where all the energy is concentrated in this one thing instead of dispersed over this larger scene. And the cool thing too was that we didn't have the time and budget to do lighting setups for two hours, so we just had to keep barreling forward and going and going and going and just shooting nonstop and so that sense of urgency and the energy of that I think really carried over into the film too. You've got this real sense of energy that I think comes from [the fact that] we didn't have those moments where all the energy can drain out."